1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus for storing, organizing, displaying and dispensing pairs of socks or other small garments and more particularly to a hanging, telescoping garment organizer featuring an incorporated hanging system.
Typically, socks are scattered in a dresser drawer in the bedroom while clothing is usually hung in the closet. It is then often difficult to mach the socks to the clothing to wear, when the socks are kept in a different area. The clothes need then to be brought from the closet to the bedroom, or vice versa, to perform the clothes/socks match operation.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been conceived, by providing the capability of storing and organizing socks and other small garments in the closet area, where commonly most of the clothes are hanged. This novel garment organizer comprises an imbedded hooking system to allow the organizer to be hanged to the closet's hanging bar or to be hung on a wall.
This invention allows keeping socks and other small garments organized, yet visible, while neatly rolled one inside the other and stored inside the organizer, which also separately store in evidence, single “stray” socks, until their lost matches are found. To accomplish this, a plurality of optional sock clips can be mounted on the outside walls of the organizer to temporarily clip in view unmatched socks.
The organizer comprises an upper, tubular container and a lower, tubular container which are telescoping one inside the other to decrease the volume of the organizer facilitating shipping, packaging and minimizing the storage space when the organizer is not in use. The lower container can in fact be totally contained inside the upper container.
Rolled pairs of socks or other small garments can be inserted, displayed and retrieved through the front side vertical openings of both the upper and lower containers.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Numerous containers are available to store and organize a variety of items, but organizers and similar devices, specifically designed to store and organize socks are not abundant as socks are considered, generally, a low-attention garment.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,126,021 defines an Article Storage System capable of being suspended, having two vertical rows of compartments with side access openings to store a variety of items. The apparatus is collapsible to ease transportation and storage when not hanging, However, this apparatus is completely different in all aspects from the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,972,094 “Device for Securing and Storing Paired Socks” describes a compartmentalized box to store pairs of socks using clips. Although this device neatly separates pair of socks form one another, after being matched with their respected partners socks pairs do not actually need to separate from other pairs, therefore, the compartmentalized containers are superfluous. As in the present invention, one sufficiently large container, consisting of an upper and lower container, is more effective for storage and selection of paired, rolled socks.
The sock storage and dispenser of U.S. Pat. No. 5,740,944 depicts a multiple parallel slots to provide capacity storage. In the present invention, the capacity storage is provided by one upper container whose volume is doubled when the lower container is telescopically extended out of the upper container. This represents the significant novelty of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,147,119 shows a vertical container for storing pairs of socks having its capacity limited by its size. Additionally, the vertical container is not designed to be hanged. The biggest drawback of this device is that the only retrievable pair of sock is the one on the bottom of the stack, which it could not be the one desired.
Chinese patent CN 201175229 Y shows an ineffective, hanging sock-shape container with multiple, yet limited, number of divisions to store few small garments.
Canadian patent application 2 654 075 A1 shows a hanging, collapsible garment organizer comprising multiple, independent containers each with an individual access panel that can be opened to insert the garment. Unless the little doors are made of transparent material, the garments stored will not be visible. This design is completely different from the present invention.